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Jayakumar urges Singapore to retain GRC minority safeguards amid racial tensions

Former senior minister S Jayakumar says Singapore should keep electoral safeguards for minority representation while racial tensions remain a concern.

NewsJaws DeskEditorial desk

Published 26 Oct 2026, 22:33 GMT2 min read

Exterior of The Arts House, formerly the Old Parliament House, in Singapore at blue hour. — Context photograph of The Arts House, formerly the Old Parliament House, in Singapore, photographed on August 18, 2023. © Frank Schulenburg — Frank Schulenburg, The Arts House during blue hour (2023)-L1003783 (resized and converted to WebP). CC BY-SA 4.0.Image source Image licence: CC BY-SA 4.0

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Former senior minister S Jayakumar urged Singapore to retain electoral safeguards for minority representation, saying racial tensions remain open to exploitation. In an interview published on 27 October in Singapore, he told Channel NewsAsia (CNA) that the Group Representation Constituency (GRC) system remains necessary despite decades of progress on race relations.

Jayakumar cited online comments following the Nepal-Tibet disaster and Singapore Airlines’ investment in Air India as examples of the sensitivity of race. His remarks set out a case for keeping existing safeguards; they were not an announcement of a change to election rules.

Why Jayakumar backs the GRC system

The GRC system should cease to apply only when people can confidently say race, language and religion are no longer matters of concern, Jayakumar told CNA. He said Singapore had made great progress but should remain alert to ‘racial undercurrents’ that some people might exploit.

Jayakumar traced the system to a 1982 proposal by founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew to pair constituencies so that two candidates would contest together, one from a minority community. Jayakumar said he suggested appointing minority MPs when elected numbers fell short, but Lee objected because those MPs would not have been chosen by voters.

Another proposal would have reserved constituencies for Malay candidates. Jayakumar said that, too, was considered unacceptable to the minority community. Goh Chok Tong later proposed broadening the GRC arrangement beyond Malay representation to include other minority communities, Jayakumar recalled. CNA reported that Parliament passed the scheme in May 1988 and that it began at the general election later that year, covering 39 seats in 13 GRCs out of 81 seats overall.

His case for reserved presidential elections

Jayakumar also backed the provision for reserved presidential elections, which he said he supported before a constitutional commission formally proposed it. Changes passed in November 2016 allow an election to be reserved for a community that has not held the presidency for five consecutive terms, CNA reported.

He described the provision as a precaution, asking whether Singapore could be certain that a minority candidate would win an open presidential election in the decades ahead. The mechanism applies when the representation condition is met, rather than to every presidential contest. Jayakumar’s past involvement with a minority-community organisation includes serving as chairman of the Singapore Indian Development Association’s Board of Trustees, according to a 2011 speech published by the Istana.